Funnel systems are used in the art to direct a product to a container, such as a food product which has been weighed on an automatic weigher into a tray to be sealed. It is known that after the product is delivered through a funnel to the tray, the product may need to be tamped down into the tray prior to applying a seal around the top of the tray. As this tamping is done by hand at a location downstream from the location of the funnel, the funnel must be positioned with its bottom outlet slightly (e.g., about 1/4th inch) above the tray so that the subsequent movement of the tray relative to the funnel does not cause the mound of the product delivered by the funnel to engage the end of the bottom outlet and be knocked onto the sealing area. However, this positioning of the bottom outlet above the tray allows some of the product to occasionally bounce or splash out of the tray onto the sealing area. The presence of any product on the sealing area is not only unsightly but it obviously also adversely affects any applied seal.
It is known in the art to provide food loading funnels with means to compact or otherwise mechanically interact with the product being fed. For example, in the Jordan U.S. Pat. No. 2,334,774, a press acts against the bottom of a funnel to form comminuted meat products into a rectangular block. The Haver U.S. Pat. No. 2,939,494 also shows a funnel with rotating shovels which fling material into a receiving bag.
However, none of these references address the problem of automatically tamping a product after it has been delivered from a funnel into a container.
Thus, there exists a need for improvements in tamping a product once it has been delivered from a funnel into a receiving container such as a tray or the like.